Ask them if they close and lock the door when they go to the bathroom. If they say yes, ask them why.
There's a difference between privacy and secret. Don't conflate them!
~h.t. Cory Doctorow
“How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
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Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#12You don't, that's a waste of time for anyone actually proficient in OPSEC.
After years of advocating for privacy on multiple fronts (amateur-enthusiast to professional) I realize that most people are not capable of being trusted to protect themselves from even the most basic threat vectors, and that convenience is the biggest priority in their calculus, thus it will never occur to them why things like PgP encryption and cryptocurency is necessary until its too late.
At which point they're a potential customer, so why am I going to reduce my Market share?
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#13[flagged]
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#14In what context is the question of whether somebody has anything to hide even relevant? It's like asking how to convince somebody that unicorns aren't real. Very few people believe unicorns are real and the fact that those few people believe unicorns are real is of little consequence. The real question is do you trust the law to keep the things you want hidden hidden and to make the secrets of criminals that you don't want hidden available to law enforcement officials. For most people in the United States, that's a "Yes."
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#15We all have something that we don't want other people to know or see. Ask them why they wear clothing every day. And close the door when they are in the restroom.
Also, point them to all the damage the Sony hack did. There was nothing illegal in the emails and I'm sure many thought they had nothing to hide. But the hacking of the email sure made their lives hell.
Lastly, talk to them about all the identity theft fraud that's constantly in the news.
You may be able to trust some people with some of your info. but you can't trust anyone but yourself with all your info.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#16These three questions work pretty well:
1. If you called a lawyer, would you expect privacy?
2. Do you want naked fotos of your family on the Internet?
3. Did you tell your co-workers/boss who you voted for?
The real zinger is:
Do you know the police track your vehicle from home to work and back? (It's been reported the US government flies privately-registered surveillance aircraft over large US cities in a racetrack-pattern and use time-lapse photos to track vehicles.)
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#17Ask them to unlock their phone and hand it over. Reassure them they can watch everything you do with it and that you won't use it to impersonate them, and if they want you to stop, the safe word is "I have something to hide."
This. Throwing facts and figures at them won't work. You have to make them feel it. I usually ask them if they have any problem with revenge porn sites.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#18Maybe they are just saying "I have nothing to hide from the government "? This might be true for most law-abiding citizens in the US atleast where there is a reasonable rule of law (as compared to many other parts of the world!).
That's what that phrase means, people saying "hand over your phone" or "leave the door unlocked" or "livestream your life" completely missed the point, which doesn't even resonate with what the article was referring to.
The articles talked about trading privacy for convenience and comfort. All the "counter arguments" people listed have nothing to do with those two.
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#19You could frame the right of privacy in different terms such as encryption is a type of munition to protect your information from a tyrannical government. This closely matches the typical argument people use for second amendment rights.
There are also other ways to frame the premise:
If you have nothing to say, then why do you need the freedom of speech?
If you have nothing to defend, then why do you need the right to bear arms?
Re: “How do you talk to 'I have nothing to hide' people?”
#20There's two facets to this: one is about privacy and the other is a naïveté about the nature of people with power and how the weak fail to anticipate the powerful's capabilities.
First: Okay, they give me all of your passwords, banking PINs, a list of all of your sexual proclivities, all of your browser histories including porn, and agree to live in a glass house that's live-streamed 24x7 to the internet.
Second: The weak rarely realize the scope of capabilities the powerful can lord over them. One obvious capability is powerful can direct district attorneys/crown prosecutors to look for evidence that a target has committed a crime. One common attack is over-prosecution for technical infractions that the weak volunteer; that this, giving too much information combined with tens of thousands of arcane laws setup the victim for attack. For more on this topic, there's a good book called Three Felonies a Day. Furthermore, sometimes the powerful just make up "crimes" to justify harsh punishments: Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Fred Hampton and Leonard Peltier are just a few that come to mind. (Daniel Ellsberg's freedom is a miracle.) Furthermore, powerful people have powerful friends who have even more capabilities at their disposal. It's not some sort of grand, organized conspiracy theory, it's human nature that people of similar interests help others in a similar station and those at the top have many more sacrificial Random Jobs.